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Financial Assistance Scheme (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2008

My Lords, I think I just discerned support for these regulations in all of that. The noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, is absolutely right that I should have covered the short notice in my opening remarks; I apologise. As he recognised, we want to get this through before the summer Recess, so that we can begin to make the ill-health payments, in particular, as quickly as possible. I acknowledge that it is not always easy for the Opposition to deal with such matters quickly. The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, asked about costs and whether they were gross or net. They are gross costs: gross of tax and benefits. A net figure would be a discount of a quarter to a third of that gross figure; that is a ballpark figure. He also asked how interim payments would work for FAS ill-health claims. Interim payments on the grounds of ill health work in the same way as initial payments for FAS. They are appropriate when schemes have not completed wind-up and the final figures are not known. He also asked about annual upratings and FAS being increased by 2.5 per cent. These things are not included in the social security benefit order, so it is not in an uprating order. The 2.5 per cent he referred to relates to the cap on indexation, an outstanding issue that we will look at in later regulation. Both noble Lords asked why the period for ill-health payments was five years. We understand, as noble Lords have done, that campaigners have called for more generous ill-health provision. We are sympathetic to campaigners’ concerns about ill-health benefits in a small number of particularly difficult cases. We continue to work closely with them to see if we can resolve the issues.